It had been a long journey out to find Isabella’s necklace, but with what Hugo Reyes had just said, Richard felt like he could make it back to the campfire in an hour. Stop the Man in Black. It was a simple enough request, but the consequences for not doing it were grave. He’d been damned once before, in a jail on Tenerife, but he hadn’t faced that yet. And if Reyes was right, and they would all go to Hell, he did not want to find out what would happen to an immortal man in Hell.

The sooner they got back to the rest of the group, the better. It was still daylight out, and as he retraced his steps with the other man trailing behind him, he wanted to tell Hugo to hurry up. He couldn’t leave him behind, though — not with things having taken the turn they had, and his companion being a candidate for Jacob’s replacement. No matter where he stood on Jacob right now, if the candidates were as special as he had seen, abandoning them would have been folly at best, and potential suicide at least.

They’d been walking for about half an hour when the silence broke. “So, hey, man. I’m getting tired of having to trudge through the jungle with people.”

“Then don’t. Simple as that.”

“I wouldn’t have to,” Hugo Reyes said between strenuous breaths and crunching twigs, “if people didn’t half-have to be dragged everywhere, and half-run off without telling me where they’re going. You think I want to be doing this all the time?”

Yes, in a way, Richard thought. “So stop being their caretaker. You don’t have to, you know. Nobody made you come out here after me.”

“Your wife asked me.”

“You could have sent someone else to find me.” There was a rustle of leaves about sixty feet ahead. He had spent long enough living in the wild to know the difference between the sounds of animals and humans moving through the thickets. This was a human coming towards them.

To his credit, Hugo stopped talking as soon as Richard cut him off. He heard what was coming towards them, too, and for a moment, he was silent, before panic bubbled over.

“We gotta go, man! We can’t just hang around here!”

But they couldn’t have gone anywhere in time. Just as Hugo said that, someone emerged from the bushes on the path ahead. He had expected someone different, but seeing Ilana was no real surprise. Of course she had come after him, rifle in hand. And at least that rifle wasn’t pointed at him.

“Why did you run off, Richard?” The woman nodded at Reyes, who was still staring in shock. “And why is he with you?” Her hand tightened a little on the rifle, and Richard wondered what result the wrong answer might bring.

“I had to get something. I didn’t ask him to come. He just followed me.”

Ilana’s attention drifted off Richard and refocused on the larger man. Her question remained just as brief. “Why?”

Hugo was not a good liar. In any other situation, that might have been refreshing. Right now, it was a liability. “Just because, OK? I wanted to. That’s all.”

Richard glanced back down to the rifle as Ilana’s face grew dark. She was holding the weapon even more tightly now, enough to make her knuckles turn white. For a moment, he started to wonder if the candidates really couldn’t be killed on the island, just as he’d wondered briefly about his own immortality. The answers to both these questions could definitely wait, though.

“Ilana,” he forced out, “let’s talk about this, all right? Whatever his motivations were, they don’t matter right now. They’re not that important. None of our motivations are important right now.”

He didn’t think she would believe him. But the woman seemed to, though, looking back at Richard as if he’d offered her some strange and unanticipated piece of news. “Then what is important, Richard? You said before that you didn’t know what we had to do.”

“I do now. We find the Man in Black, and we stop him.” Neither he nor Ilana bothered to acknowledge Reyes’ murmured assent behind him.

The woman’s dark mood lifted, if only slightly. Her expression changed to satisfaction, and she didn’t wear it as well as he’d have thought. There was pride behind it, not joy. “You see? Jacob said you would know what to do.”

It’s going to be a longer walk back to the campfire than I’d have thought, Richard realized, but another glance at Ilana told him that he’d rather deal with her complacency than deal with the results of her anger. He shrugged at her, flicking his hand towards the path from which she’d come, a silent signal for her to lead the way. Behind him, he could hear Reyes sigh at the prospect of picking up the trek through the jungle, but at least now the other man would be far less likely to slow them down._________________I saw a werewolf drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic's. His hair was perfect.

The handshake was brief, but firm. Though she could not speak his language, Sun could understand it as well as she ever could and, as the American saying went, a promise was a promise. She had to believe Jack would help her find Jin; the only other option was to wait, and she had already spent years waiting.

The beach was a lonely place, though, and even more lonely when she was unable to talk to other people. A short distance away, she could see a campfire burning and vaguely make out the rest of the group sitting there. But they could not talk to her at the moment and, from the way that they were huddled over the fire, she was unsure if she even wanted to talk to them, either.

She could make out the looming mountains of the island all around her, such a dark purple they were almost black, and thought, I am alone here. Was this how Jin had felt before, having spent months on the island being unable to communicate with anyone except for her? Was this how he had felt in her father’s world, a fisherman’s son thrust into a corporate culture he couldn’t possibly hope to understand?

Stop thinking like that, she told herself, and tore her focus away from the mountains. The sea was easier to study. Now that her garden had been dead for years, the sea was the only thing left that was even remotely familiar.

***

Charles Widmore’s pictures of Ji Yeon stayed burned in his brain, and as the news filtered into the Hydra station of Desmond Hume’s sudden disappearance, Jin closed his eyes and saw his daughter’s face. She was chubby like most children were, but there was something in her eyes that reminded him strongly of Sun: A questioning, curious look that said she was more than she first let on. That was what had attracted him to her when they had first met, and he could only hope that his daughter would be just as strong and intelligent.

Her voice was shrill with exasperation. “Well, don’t! We need to get moving. Come on!”

The next few minutes were spent in a flurry of activity: People slung on rifles by their straps, and there was constant chatter amongst the operatives at the station about how Hume had escaped. The word stuck in his head: Escaped, rather than mutinied or gone rogue or any of a number of less positive words that he might have expected them to use in the situation. Were people here really not that enthusiastic about working for Widmore? Why did they bother, then?

He knew which one of them would be the easiest to ask the question of, and he found her in a corridor, hurriedly grabbing what seemed like everything she owned. She didn’t notice that he was walking up to her before he was nearly there, and when she saw him there, she jumped, laughed like it didn’t matter, and placed a hand against her locker with a bang.

“Zoe.”

In between shoving electrical equipment into her pockets, she turned to look at him, still edgy and nervous. “Yeah?”

“I have a question for you. And you’re going to answer it.”

***

“Hey, Sun? You need anything?”

Jin, she wanted to say. But she knew that Hurley couldn’t get that for her at the moment. She would have to find him herself. So she smiled apologetically up at the young man and shook her head.

“Um, he’s not dead, you know.”

Despite the initial hesitation, the certainty in Hurley’s voice surprised her. She almost got out the piece of paper she’d been using to write notes, but realized she could say the same thing silently. She offered Hurley a curious look and raised her brows: Why?

“Because if Jin was dead, if they’d killed him over there, I could—crap. Never mind.” And then Hurley went ambling off, large feet sending up scads of sand with each step. Apparently he had thought better of whatever he had been about to tell her.

Sun fought the urge to laugh at his retreat, but part of it struck at her as curious, too. What could Hurley have done if Jin was dead? If Jack was right about the possibility that she would get her voice back, once she did, she would have to ask Hurley what he meant. For now, though, all that she could do was to sit there and wonder what he meant by what he had said.

***

“This whole… assignment. The reason you came here.” Jin saw a flash of tension cross Zoe’s face, tightening her already tight expression into a real grimace. “You went to a lot of trouble to come here, and to bring Desmond here as well. What do you get out of it?”

“God, I thought you were going to ask why we came here.” It was clearly out before Zoe could stop herself. She grimaced, but just looked at him for another moment, toying with the zipper on her knapsack. “He asked for our help, Mr. Kwon. So we did.”

“You know that’s not an answer.”

Zoe shrugged, dropping her hand from the zipper of her knapsack. “I came here because it was the only option.”

“To do what?”

Zoe froze for a moment at the question and took her time to look at him. When she did, though, she was focused squarely on him, a weird and almost fanatical clarity to her gaze. “To save the world,” she said simply, and continued before he could ask further. “Now, look, Mr. Kwon, if you want to ask any other questions, you’re going to have to wait, all right? We happen to have a situation on our hands, in case you hadn’t noticed. Are you coming with us?”

He heard the resignation in his own voice. “What other choice do I have?”

Zoe turned to him, a suddenly weary expression planted squarely on her face, her shoulders sagging with fatigue that seemed more than just physical. “That’s the same choice I had, Mr. Kwon. Do you know how to use a rifle?”_________________I saw a werewolf drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic's. His hair was perfect.

All around them was thick foliage, the typical underbrush of the jungle, but they moved quickly enough. Neither seemed to feel the immediate need to talk; if Sayid didn’t have time to explain, Desmond realized, he would be less than appreciative of any unneeded conversation. Desmond felt himself clear enough about matters. He could easily avoid peppering the Iraqi with questions about what had happened.

So when Sayid spoke first, Desmond found it amusing, although not surprising. “What did they say they were going to do, Desmond?”

“Pardon?”

“Widmore’s people. Before I overpowered them, the woman with the glasses said something about how your brain being fried did not change things. What didn’t it change?”

Something in Sayid’s voice told Desmond that the other man had some semblance of an idea about what it hadn’t changed. Personal experience? Desmond had no idea why he should think that, though. Clearly, there was very little outward difference between the Sayid he’d last seen on the island and the man walking with him now, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was accompanying someone very different than he had previously known.

“Desmond.” There was a harsh sound to his name.

“I tell you, I’ve no bloody idea.” And even if he had more of one than he did, Desmond realized, he couldn’t tell Sayid. Sayid wouldn't believe him, anyway.

Still, even though in the darkness he could barely make out the dubious lift of Sayid’s brows, he knew the interrogator did not believe him.

Charles Widmore’s Hydra island was unfamiliar to him, but it seemed familiar to Sayid. That was strange: He didn’t recall the Iraqi ever saying that he had been over here, much less that he had spent the time that would be required to move through the jungle so easily and naturally. Still, as long as he was getting away from Charles Widmore’s camp and the solenoid room, he could not bring himself to complain.

There was something uncanny about this whole journey, though. He hadn’t spent much time in the wilderness, even when he had been in the Hatch pushing the button, but he had to believe nonetheless that even the most experienced explorer would have to hesitate every now and again to take stock of changes in the situation and to scale any obstacles that were in the way. Sayid did not hesitate or stumble for even an instant, though; it was almost as if the trek had been planned in advance.

That idea kept on gnawing at him, and as they got onto dry land again, back on the larger island, he finally decided that it was time to address things properly. So as they made their way across the sand and back to another round of endless thickets, he cleared his throat: “Sayid. Listen, mate.”

The other man pivoted on a heel towards him, but stayed silent.

“How are you feeling?”

“Unwell.” And Sayid turned around and started walking again.

“All right,” Desmond muttered, but Sayid didn’t show any sign of reacting. Instead, another slow, silent few hours dragged on, and the jungle started to look the same to Desmond again. He wondered what had really happened to Sayid, but supposed he’d find out. Whatever plan the Island and Charles Widmore had to have brought him back again, it no doubt involved his current company as well.

They bivouacked somewhere in the jungle, Sayid still silent and morose. When Desmond caught a glimpse of the man, he could not catch his eye, since Sayid spent most of the time staring into the flames of the campfire, as if he could see something within the fire. Whatever it was that Sayid could see, Desmond was not entirely sure that he wanted to know.

When they woke again, they started moving again. By now, hunger was gnawing at Desmond. He hadn’t eaten since he had left Widmore’s camp, and he suspected Sayid had had no food either. But meals did not seem to be on the itinerary. He wanted to ask Sayid to stop so that they could find something to eat, but he didn’t dare take the chance. With the mood that hung over both of them, the request very likely wouldn’t end well.

“We’re stopping here.” It had been since last night that Sayid had said anything to him. Now, in a clearing filled with sunlight, the man had broken the silence again. “I’m afraid I will have to ask you to wait here.”

“For what?”

“You’ll see.” Sayid reached into his pack, extracting a length of rope. “Sit down against that tree, please.”

The businesslike manner in which Sayid asked this told Desmond that it wouldn’t do any good to resist. He doubted that Sayid would have saved him from Widmore’s people only to kill him, anyway, and even if that werethe case, he’d already fallen for it anyway. So he shrugged and sat down.

“I am sorry to have to do this, Desmond.”

For a moment, Desmond was uncertain if Sayid meant tying him up, or something else entirely. Then he decided it didn’t matter. As long as the rain didn’t start, and as long as he had something to eat, he could very possibly sit here for the rest of the day without any major problems. Still, he did want breakfast by now, and saw no real harm in asking that, at least: “Don’t suppose I could get a drink and a bite to eat?”

Wordless again, Sayid dropped a water canteen into Desmond’s lap without preamble, hunched beside him to make sure he didn’t take the opportunity to flee. A mango followed, ripe and seeming fairly succulent. Between his pangs of hunger and the shoddy meal that Widmore’s people had fed him, it would probably be the best thing he’d eaten in weeks.

“Eat.” It was an order, not an offer.

In between bites of the mango and gulps of the water, he looked up at Sayid, who still hovered patiently but without expression, waiting for him to finish. When he was polishing off the last succulent bites of the mango, he decided it was time to speak. “Listen, brotha. You don’t have to tie me up.”

Sayid’s face didn’t change. He swiped the canteen from where it sat between them and started threading the rope around Desmond’s body, securing him to the tree. At least he didn’t pull the rope so tight to be painful, Desmond realized, although he knew mentioning that might make things worse.

Still, when Sayid finished and stepped away to inspect the handiwork, Desmond felt he hadn’t quite explained his case. “I won’t go anywhere. There’s nowhere for me to run to.”

The measured look Sayid gave him, dark and evaluating, was enough to fritter away some of his temporary amusement at the situation. “I know,” was all his captor said before, water canteen in hand, he strolled away from the man tied to the tree.

And so Desmond waited, although he figured it wouldn’t be for long._________________I saw a werewolf drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic's. His hair was perfect.